Price-performance hit: MacBook Neo overtakes the M1 MacBook Air

Apple’s new bargain MacBook attacks its own classic: The MacBook Neo for $599 beats the M1 MacBook Air by up to 43 percent in CPU tests – and thus seriously questions its reputation as the price-performance king.

Price-performance hierarchy rearranged

For years, the M1 MacBook Air was considered the undisputed savings tip in the Mac portfolio with enough power for everyday life and a comparatively moderate price. Now, with the MacBook Neo, an even cheaper model is pushing forward, which attacks exactly this title and is positioning itself as a new price-performance hit in many scenarios. Since a large percentage of people believe that Apple’s five-year-old device offers better value for money, the current comparison of WCC Tech Convince all doubters to the contrary, because the MacBook Neo achieves a performance increase of up to 43 percent in CPU tests.

With the MacBook Neo, Apple is opening the door to the Mac world more cheaply than ever before. The first benchmarks show that the entry-level model for 699 euros delivers significantly more speed in important CPU tests than the five-year-old classic – and at a noticeably lower starting price. The heart of the MacBook Neo is the A18 Pro chip, which Apple is moving from the current iPhone 16 Pro series into a 13-inch notebook.

In Geekbench 6 CPU tests, the processor is around 43 percent ahead of the M1 in the MacBook Air in terms of single-core performance, but the multi-core values ​​are in a very similar range. For everyday tasks such as surfing, office, video conferencing or light photo editing, the Neo should feel noticeably faster as soon as only one or a few cores are required – exactly the area in which users are most likely to notice the difference in everyday life.

Graphics slowed down

When it comes to the graphics section, Apple is deliberately slowing down the Neo: Instead of the full A18 Pro GPU, the notebook uses a version with five cores instead of six. This is reflected in the Geekbench 6 Metal test, where the M1 MacBook Air is around 12.5 percent ahead. The performance of the MacBook Neo is still easily sufficient for simple graphics tasks, casual gaming or UI animations, but anyone who regularly uses graphics-intensive workflows or games will still benefit slightly from the M1’s more powerful GPU part.

This puts the Neo right in the gap where used or discounted M1 MacBooks were previously considered bargains – and is now putting additional pressure on them. The bottom line is that the benchmark comparison shows: Where the M1 MacBook Air was long considered Apple’s price-performance king, the MacBook Neo now claims this title with more CPU power for the money if you are willing to accept small compromises in graphics.

Apple MacBook Neo – technical data in comparison

Joshua Bato